Bruckner

[P. G. Tipps]

I On the subject of AH's musical tastes, Speer states that musical evenings (on records) at Berchtesgarden often began with Wagner, but after a few sides operettas and musical comedies were preferred.

Which maybe therefore begs the obvious question why comment on operettas and musical comedies appear remarkably free of any mention of 'AH" and the Nazis!

Whatever Hitler's actual music preferences were the Nazi propaganda machine actively promoting Bruckner as a composer is undeniable and some still appear to use this as a stick to bash his reputation to this day.

Sadly there has been left to posterity the following truly sickening photograph which might explain some music critics' apparent inability to separate Propaganda from Truth.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/6b/4d/7c/6b4d7c206a29fc46e86fe043f3c7c00f.jpg

[Petrushka]

I've read extensively of the literature on the Third Reich for very many years and amongst it all I have found very little mention of Bruckner apart from the occasional reference and that usually in specific studies of the cultural aspects of the period. I'm therefore puzzled as to why this subject has achieved such prominence in this thread.

It is true that Bruckner came from the same Austrian peasant stock around Linz as did Hitler and also true that the Nazis promoted his music. However, none of this is Bruckner's fault though it is easy to see why the quasi-mystical properties inherent in the music attracted Hitler. The inclusion of the end of Bruckner 5 in the World at War accompanying Hitler's 1940 victory drive through a defeated Paris does have a certain 'appropriate' quality that is undeniable while the German Radio broadcasting of the second movement of the Bruckner 7 on May 1 1945 also has an 'appropriateness' that cannot be denied.

Having said all this, it's long been history, now getting on for 80 years ago and in the general evaluation of Bruckner's music (and Wagner's too) hardly matters much anymore other than as an unfortunate association. I can see no point in going over this ground any further.

[P. G. Tipps]

... I can see no point in going over this ground any further.

Quite ... which is exactly why one wonders why some music critics and commentators keep dredging up 'this ground', which was the main point of the writer of the article in the link I provided ?

I have simply indicated my own long-held suspicions, others may well have their own alternative theories !.

[bluestateprommer]

Interesting, not just the headline but the absolute guff that is still said about Bruckner, well over a century after his death, and which the writer is clearly so annoyed about ?

For convenience, the original NYT article about the Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim cycle at Carnegie Hall is here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/arts/music/bruckner-barenboim-staatskapelle-berlin-carnegie-hall.html

It may not be fashionable to say this, but when I'd seen this article, I reacted mentally with a big "Yes! I agree with this!". Finally, someone, or rather two people, articulated better than I could myself why I have such trouble warming to Bruckner. CdF-W writes this comment on Bruckner's dance movements, which made me nod in recognition:

"The dance movements in Bruckner are always correct, rarely sensual."

Or this other passage from CdF-W about the scherzo of the Ninth:

"Take the Scherzo of the Ninth, its driving rhythm pounded out in unison by the huge string section: wildness tamed and bunched into a collective. It seems to contain all that is both seductive and terrifying about the unified energy of the masses — what the Polish dissident poet Czeslaw Milosz describes as the “trireme of the totalitarian state, speeding ahead with outspread oars.” It’s music to go to battle to..."

I saw the GMJO's Prom last August at the RAH, with Bruckner 9. The cello section, especially, gave me virtually that same thought, albeit w/o the Milosz quote, namely that these kids are ready to march into battle, with that kind of unanimity of attack (pun not intended) and ensemble that was impressive, but also scary, to behold. Interestingly, though, the Ninth strikes me as the one Bruckner symphony that I felt most able to connect to, in the few times that I've heard it live (only twice, ever). (FWIW, if it means anything, CdF-W is Jewish.)

Some years back, I heard Dennis Russell Davies lead the Bruckner Orchester Linz in a concert in NYC, at what was then called Avery Fisher Hall, with the original version of Bruckner 4. It was so repetitive that it nearly drove my brain up the wall. The later versions are so much better, and less tendentious.

I realize that Bruckner is one of those genuinely one-off composers who found his own way, the hard way. On that level, I can respect him for going his own way and writing what he did. That doesn't mean that I have to like it personally, of course.

[jayne lee wilson]

That NY Times article expresses nothing but bafflement in the face of greatness; and is a travesty of the music's many and varied meanings, expressions and references; as anyone who has lived with, and truly loves this wonderful music will know. To Know You is To Love You....

Woolfe and Fonseca-Wollheim give us the reaction of the iPod, iPhone generation; like this try that, like/dislike, download delete, stream don't save, short attention span, routine impatience...

So the "dance movements in Bruckner" aren't "sensual"? (I take it they mean the scherzos, perhaps the gesangsperioden too) So they haven't actually listened to any of the trios then? The trios, say, of the 2nd, 4th or 6th Symphonies, so full of Austrian terrain, evocative of the pastoral spirit and the sounds of nature, and human joy in nature, as they are? So replete with burgeoning, glorious string melodies, like that unforgettable, arms-spread-wide to greet the mountaintop view at the climax of the trio of the 8th? Or the suavely smiling, hipswinging Wiener Waltzer of No.3? (well, at least when Knappertsbusch conducts it...)
Not sensual? More a case of not listening, or being unable to hear through the fog of their own scattershot historical associations and disassociations.
The NY Times article is silly, trivialising stuff; but it may seriously mislead an ignorant or casual listener....

[jayne lee wilson]

OK - so, if, as those NY Times “Critics” do (as per #169 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/a...egie-hall.html,) you say this about the 9th’s scherzo -

“Take the Scherzo of the Ninth, its driving rhythm pounded out in unison by the huge string section: wildness tamed and bunched into a collective. It seems to contain all that is both seductive and terrifying about the unified energy of the masses — what the Polish dissident poet Czeslaw Milosz describes as the “trireme of the totalitarian state, speeding ahead with outspread oars.” It’s music to go to battle to — “

You might care to say why this description should apply to this specific Bruckner movement, rather than, say, several driving, demonic aggressive movements from Shostakovich or Prokofiev Symphonies (where the description might be thought to have at least some historically associative point, if only an obvious, generalised one).
Using such a politically oppressive analogy for this Bruckner piece shows a worrying lack of wider knowledge of other 19th and 20th Century orchestral music, and a startling lack of background knowledge about Bruckner himself: the agonised dramas of faith & doubt, the individual religious demons he was up against; and of course a convenient disregard for the trio of that movement from the 9th: as otherworldly, delicate and angelic as the scherzo framing it is eery and fiendish.

I recall reading this analogy about the 9th’s scherzo: “ where Bottom galumphs and Ariel dances on fantastic toe…” (***)
I can’t recall the source, possibly the Gramophone somewhere. Yes, all analogy is subjective and you may or may not like it, but - it seems to me wonderfully apt to the movement’s range of sound and mood, from the eerily sinister to that unattainable vision of incorporeal lightness and peace….
But above all: it responds to the music individually, and positively; doesn’t lapse into easy, negative generalisation.

(***) In respect of this scherzo's contrasts, take a a listen to Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream...
Try the Midsummer scherzo's first theme, slow it right down, orchestrate with heavy brass, and.......

[ahinton]

OK - so, if, as those NY Times “Critics” do (as per #169 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/a...egie-hall.html,) you say this about the 9th’s scherzo -

“Take the Scherzo of the Ninth, its driving rhythm pounded out in unison by the huge string section: wildness tamed and bunched into a collective. It seems to contain all that is both seductive and terrifying about the unified energy of the masses — what the Polish dissident poet Czeslaw Milosz describes as the “trireme of the totalitarian state, speeding ahead with outspread oars.” It’s music to go to battle to — “

You might care to say why this description should apply to this specific Bruckner movement, rather than, say, several driving, demonic aggressive movements from Shostakovich or Prokofiev Symphonies (where the description might be thought to have at least some historically associative point, if only an obvious, generalised one).
Using such a politically oppressive analogy for this Bruckner piece shows a worrying lack of wider knowledge of other 19th and 20th Century orchestral music, and a startling lack of background knowledge about Bruckner himself: the agonised dramas of faith & doubt, the individual religious demons he was up against; and of course a convenient disregard for the trio of that movement from the 9th: as otherworldly, delicate and angelic as the scherzo framing it is eery and fiendish.

I recall reading this analogy about the 9th’s scherzo: “ where Bottom galumphs and Ariel dances on fantastic toe…” (***)
I can’t recall the source, possibly the Gramophone somewhere. Yes, all analogy is subjective and you may or may not like it, but - it seems to me wonderfully apt to the movement’s range of sound and mood, from the eerily sinister to that unattainable vision of incorporeal lightness and peace….
But above all: it responds to the music individually, and positively; doesn’t lapse into easy, negative generalisation.

(***) In respect of this scherzo's contrasts, take a a listen to Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream...
Try the Midsummer scherzo's first theme, slow it right down, orchestrate with heavy brass, and.......

All excellent points, elegantly and eloquently expressed, as in your previous post on this! Many thanks.

[Petrushka]

All excellent points, elegantly and eloquently expressed, as in your previous post on this! Many thanks.

Wholeheartedly seconded. Brilliant posts, both of them.

[Petrushka]

All excellent points, elegantly and eloquently expressed, as in your previous post on this! Many thanks.

Wholeheartedly seconded. Brilliant posts, both of them.

[Richard Barrett]

All of these arguments, though, have a flavour of "Oh yes it is!" "Oh no it isn't!" about them. People often admire or reject music for reasons that they can't articulate rationally, even to themselves, and there's a tendency then to try to concoct arguments that sound rational but don't stand up to close scrutiny. If I hadn't heard the music I would find the Midsummer Night's Dream metaphor as offputting as the totalitarian one. Why is such a positive metaphor less "easy" than a negative one? Both are necessarily clumsy (because verbal) attempts to articulate a positive or negative response to music. It seems that different listeners see themselves and their ideas of beauty reflected in Bruckner's symphonies. This could perhaps be counted as one of its strengths, that of not telling the listener what to think. In that sense it isn't necessary to dismiss the NYT's reviewers as wrong-headed. It might be worth investigating what else they've written to see if they really are so ignorant or short of attention span.

[P. G. Tipps]

The point surely is not really the fact that the two critics don't understand/appreciate Bruckner's music. Sadly, they are not exactly alone. That is a 'problem' for them and others like them, nobody else. We all have 'deaf spots' even music critics.

It is simply that these two were sent by the NYT to report back on a Bruckner cycle (or some of it) and then both proceeded to bore the pants off the reader by telling him/her that they have never liked the music in the first place and hearing it again only confirmed their dislike of the composer and also made snide and completely irrelevant (if now somewhat predictable) references to the Nazis.

Remember the title of the article ... When a Composer Just Doesn’t Do It for You (No Matter How Much You Listen). Well, then, why even bother with the article in the first place ?!!

Any idiot can go to a concert containing music by a composer he/she dislikes and then smugly return to tell everyone that dislike is confirmed. One doing that is bad enough but two at the same time is just too much.

It must have been infuriating for enthusiastic concert-goers, who attended the cycle and then looked forward to reading meaningful reviews from critics about the performances, to be then presented with such a grotesque and miserable article in a supposedly quality newspaper like The New York Times?

[Richard Barrett]

It must have been infuriating for enthusiastic concert-goers, who attended the cycle and then looked forward to reading meaningful reviews from critics about the performances, to be then presented with such a grotesque and miserable article in a supposedly quality newspaper like The New York Times?

So "meaningful" = "opinions I agree with"?

[P. G. Tipps]

So "meaningful" = "opinions I agree with"?

No, though I admit that normally would be a quite unexpected bonus!

'Meaningful' as in most dictionaries ... ie relevant to the subject.

Can you just imagine two UK music critics banging on about their dislike of the composer after a Brahms or Mahler symphonic cycle?

They would probably be arrested and charged under some equality legislation introduced by the former Con-Lib Dem Coalition ..

[jayne lee wilson]

All of these arguments, though, have a flavour of "Oh yes it is!" "Oh no it isn't!" about them. People often admire or reject music for reasons that they can't articulate rationally, even to themselves, and there's a tendency then to try to concoct arguments that sound rational but don't stand up to close scrutiny. If I hadn't heard the music I would find the Midsummer Night's Dream metaphor as offputting as the totalitarian one. Why is such a positive metaphor less "easy" than a negative one? Both are necessarily clumsy (because verbal) attempts to articulate a positive or negative response to music. It seems that different listeners see themselves and their ideas of beauty reflected in Bruckner's symphonies. This could perhaps be counted as one of its strengths, that of not telling the listener what to think. In that sense it isn't necessary to dismiss the NYT's reviewers as wrong-headed. It might be worth investigating what else they've written to see if they really are so ignorant or short of attention span.

Well with statements like this from our New York Times friends:

"I find Bruckner too individual, too focused on a single, seemingly autobiographical figure — ever-besieged, ever-triumphant. (White, male, mocked by urban elites for his provincial manners and dress — sound familiar?) His symphonies may rouse the crowd — Nazi or otherwise — but their basic narratives kept feeling so insular at a moment so focused on communal action.”

“I tried my best to listen to the Second with an open mind. But the lack of flow, which some of Bruckner’s contemporaries skewered, really stood out. Bruckner said that the pauses he used to separate blocks of thematic material were like an orator drawing breath, but what came across was a nervous and inexperienced public speaker.”

And that other comment about the dance movements not being "sensual", it seems painfully obvious that they don't know Bruckner's music well ("ever besieged, ever triumphant"?!), even siding with those of Bruckner's contemporaries ("skewered" by Hanslick, no doubt) who dismissed him as a "nervous and inexperienced" composer. One can usually take it as read that if someone complains about "pauses" in Bruckner, they probably haven't listened to his music for very long or attentively - or if they have, failed to achieve any understanding of his musical ideas, structures and how they develop.
The first excerpt above is a barely coherent, text-forcing mash-up of the music as self-expression or rabble-rousing agitprop; seasoned with artistic and historical stereotypes which attempt to pin "Bruckner: The Man and The Music" down to the writer's own dated and clichéd preconceptions.

***

Listening this morning to Venzago's remarkable 9th, so radically paced and phrased, the textures glistening, light-filled, lit from within; the Schubertian (and in the scherzo, strikingly Mendelssohnian ) fountainhead seemed very palpable. A very palpable hit indeed...
Which, now that Venzago has given us his Finished-Unfinished Schubert 8th, makes his Bruckner project even clearer in its importance for a renewed understanding of this marvellous composer.

Shame though, that he's still not given us that promised disc of finale completion(s) for the 9th...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In that sense it isn't necessary to dismiss the NYT's reviewers as wrong-headed. It might be worth investigating what else they've written to see if they really are so ignorant or short of attention span.

Yes - when I read the excerpts that bsp quoted, I didn't so much "dismiss" the comments (although, yes; I did that, too) as "was totally baffled by them": so far removed were they from my reactions to Bruckner's Music that it was like reading an Art critic's dismissal of Van Gogh's Sunflowers because it represented the venal nature of the late Twentieth Century Art market. Yeah - I sort of see a connection, but not one that I would regard as a valid comment on the Art work in question. Rather there seems to be a retrograde "argument" involved: a poisonous contemporary situation being moulded into a "reason" for disliking the work of an Artist who knew nothing of that situation.

Contemplating what was "in" the Music of Bruckner that made it adaptable to the Nazis (a regime much more literally poisonous, of course, than the contemporary art market) is one that leaves my inadequate mind at a crossroads between two inconclusive points - on one side there is the point that the very different Musics of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms were equally manipulated by Nazi propagandists (and a simple substitution of "Beethoven" for "Bruckner" in the quotations in bsp's post demonstrates exactly how empty the comments are - and would be even if I shared their sentiments). On the other is the point that anti-Nazi listeners (and whilst the critics bsp quotes from are Jewish, so were/are Loewe, the Schalk brothers, Mahler, Walter, Klemperer, Solti, Barenboim ... ) do not hear the "totalitarian-supporting",earth-bound, loveless Music that is described in the quotations.

The particular "clumsiness" of such writing is that, rather than simply expressing and/or exploring a sincere and deep antipathy to the Music it discusses, it seeks further to concoct a rationale which is only tangentially connected to that Music as an "explanation" for that antipathy. And this makes me reluctant in the extreme to spend time investigating what else they've written, just as I don't really have time for positive writings on Bruckner that consist merely of wordy but empty comments on his "spirituality". There really is so much else that can be discussed about the Music to far greater benefit.